18,000+ Summer Trips

Indian Railways has approved 908 summer special trains to run 18,262 trips across the country between April 15 and July 15, 2026. (pib.gov.in) The programme is meant to handle the annual summer travel surge, when school holidays and festival travel push regular services into long waitlists. Indian Railways said 660 of those special trains, covering 11,294 trips, have already been notified and opened for booking. (infra.economictimes.indiatimes.com) The biggest share of the extra trips is concentrated in a few heavy-demand zones. Central Railway is slated to run 3,082 trips, East Central Railway 2,711, and North Western Railway 2,245, according to the official release cited by ETInfra. (infra.economictimes.indiatimes.com) Indian Railways uses “special” trains as temporary extra services layered on top of the regular timetable during rush periods. The aim is to add seats quickly on routes where demand spikes faster than the permanent schedule can absorb. (indianexpress.com) The scale is larger than recent summer programmes. The summer season of 2025 saw 12,417 summer special train trips, while the summer season of 2024 saw 12,919 trips, according to Press Information Bureau releases. (pib.gov.in, pib.gov.in) Railways has been leaning more heavily on these surge operations across the calendar, not just in summer. A year-end review for 2024 said Indian Railways operated 21,513 special train trips during peak seasons, and a December 2025 release put the 2025 total above 43,000 across Maha Kumbh, Holi, summer, and Chhath Puja. (pib.gov.in, pib.gov.in) That makes the April-to-July 2026 plan a capacity push before the busiest vacation weeks fully build, rather than a response after queues swell. The immediate test is whether the remaining approved trips are notified fast enough to cut waitlists on the most crowded corridors. (infra.economictimes.indiatimes.com, indianexpress.com)